And next to the tomb of Cephisodorus are buried Heliodorus the
Aliensian, (you may see a painting of him in the large temple of
Athene): and Themistocles the son of Poliarchus, the great grandson of
the Themistocles that fought the great sea-fight against Xerxes and the
Medes. All his other descendants except Acestius I shall pass by. But
she the daughter of Xenocles, the son of Sophocles, the son of Leo,
had the good fortune to have all her ancestors torchbearers even up to
her great grandfather Leo, and in her life she saw first her brother
Sophocles a torchbearer, and after him her husband Themistocles, and
after his death her son Theophrastus. Such was the good fortune she is
said to have had.
And as you go a little further is the grove of the hero Lacius, who
gives his name to a township. There too is the tomb of Nicocles of
Tarentum, who won the greatest fame of all harpers. There is also an
altar to Zephyrus, and a temple of Demeter and Proserpine: Athene and
Poseidon have joint honours with them. Here they say Phytalus received
Demeter into his house, and the goddess gave him in return a fig tree.
My account is confirmed by the inscription on Phytalus’ tomb.
“Here Phytalus king-hero once received
Holy Demeter, when she first vouchsafed
The fruit that mortals call the fig: since when
The race of Phytalus has deathless fame.”
And before crossing over the river Cephisus, is the tomb of
Theodorus, one of the best tragic actors of his day. And there are two
statues near the river, Mnesimaches, and his son cutting off his hair
as a votive offering to the Cephisus. That it was an ancient custom for
all the Greeks to cut off locks of their hair to rivers one would infer
from the verses of Homer, who describes Peleus as vowing to cut off
his hair to the river Spercheus if his son Achilles returned safe from
Troy.[10]
On the other side of the Cephisus is an ancient altar to Milichian
(_i.e._ _mild_) Zeus, where Theseus got purified after slaying the
progeny of Phytalus. He had slain other robbers, and Sinis, who was his
relation by Pittheus his maternal grandfather. And there are the tombs
here of Theodectes the son of Phaselites, and of Mnesitheus. This last
they say was a noted doctor, and dedicated several statues, and among
them one of Iacchus. And by the roadside is a small temple called the
temple of Cyamites (_Bean-man_): but I have no certain information,
whether he first sowed beans, or whether they gave the name to some
hero, because it was not lawful to ascribe the invention of beans to
Demeter. And whoever has seen the Eleusinian mysteries, or has read the
Orphic poems, knows what I mean. And of the tombs that are finest for
size and beauty are two especially, one of a Rhodian who had migrated
to Athens, the other of Pythionice, made by Harpalus a Macedonian, who
had fled from Alexander and sailed to Europe from Asia, and coming
to Athens was arrested by the Athenians, but escaped by bribing
the friends of Alexander and others, and before this had married
Pythionice, whose extraction I don’t know, but she was a courtesan both
at Athens and Corinth. He was so enamoured of her that, when she died,
he raised this monument to her, the finest of all the ancient works of
art in Greece.
And there is a temple in which are statues of Demeter and Proserpine
and Athene and Apollo: but originally the temple was built to Apollo
alone. For they say that Cephalus the son of Deioneus went with
Amphitryon to the Teleboæ, and was the first dweller in the island
which is now called from him Cephallenia: and that he fled from Athens,
and lived for some time at Thebes, because he had murdered his wife
Procris. And in the tenth generation afterwards Chalcinus and Dætus
his descendants sailed to Delphi, and begged of the god permission to
return to Athens: and he ordered them first to sacrifice to Apollo on
the spot where they should see a trireme on land moving. And when they
got to the mountain called Pœcilus a dragon appeared eagerly running
into its hole: and here they sacrificed to Apollo, and afterwards on
their arrival at Athens the Athenians made them citizens. Next to this
is a temple of Aphrodite, and before it a handsome wall of white stone.